San Francisco, Oct 16 Meta said on Sunday that the video shared by The Wire, which purportedly shows an internal Instagram system, appears to have been "set up specifically in order to manufacture evidence to support The Wire's inaccurate reporting".
In an update, the social network said that the video, which The Wire claims is evidence that their false allegations are true, in fact depicts an externally-created Meta Workplace account "that was deliberately set up with Instagram's name and brand insignia in order to deceive people".
Meta said in a blog post that this is an ongoing investigation and "we will update as it unfolds".
"We have located the Workplace account in question, and found that it was created on October 13 - after The Wire's news reports were initially published," claimed Meta.
The account was set up externally as a free trial account on Meta's enterprise Workplace product under the name 'Instagram' and using the Instagram brand as its profile picture.
"It is not an internal account," said the company.
Meta said it locked the account because it is "in violation of our policies and is being used to perpetuate fraud and mislead journalists".
Earlier, Meta (formerly Facebook) said that while it is legitimate for them to be held accountable for their content decisions, "the allegations made by The Wire are false" and the screenshots of two emails from Meta employee used in the story are "fake".
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